Review
Played on: Xbox Series XReleased: 2021
At first glance, you’d be forgiven to think Tormented Souls was a Resident Evil or Silent Hill game, made in the old pre-rendered style. Complete with camera angles, survival horror gameplay and puzzles. You’d be partially right though, with this assumption, as Tormented Souls really is a mix of the old Resident Evil and Silent Hill formula.
The influence is heavy, which dates all the way back to the very first Alone in the Dark, and it’s perhaps the best throwback I’ve played to re-capture the essence of this era of horror titles. Something I’d always hoped for came to successful fruition and suddenly here it is.
Seemingly released without much fanfare, Tormented Souls slipped into the abyss of average budget horror titles out there. But it offers something unique, which I have not seen executed as successfully as this. I randomly came across it being mentioned on a forum and thus decided to give it go.
What I left with, was an excellent throwback and warm nostalgic trip, while at the same time being very much creeped out by its horror. Let’s take a look.
Firstly, let’s address its first impression. You’d be forgiven to think that it’s short-skirted female protagonist, the b-movie styled intro and cumbersome voice overs, leaves a bitter taste of a low budget. However, from here it only gets better.
If you search the first room, you can swap over to a less stupid outfit for the main lead, Caroline Walker. From an anime girl skirt, with a pink bow, to regular jeans and bomber jacket. You even need to solve a puzzle to even get out of the very first room, how’s that for classic horror?
Here it progresses into a creepy layout of an abandoned hospital, complete with multiple locked doors requiring keys to be found. Sounds easy, until you realise there are enemies to either run past or fight, with limited ammo and puzzles to solve.
Every room and corridor are viewed from cleverly chosen camera angles, there are even door loading sequences. Really bringing back the nostalgia of a 32-bit styled Resident Evil.
Once the game settles in, you really start appreciating the smaller details throughout the hospital. There’s a lot of interior detail, a strong creepiness to its design and a claustrophobic feel when avoiding enemies in hallways and rooms. Although it looks like a pre-rendered game, they nailed the aesthetic perfectly, it's in fact fully 3D. Allowing for clever camera movement, better lighting and more dynamic game changes. Aesthetically it reminds of REmake, but with a more varied colour palette.
The strong side to the visuals is the atmospheric and well-designed rooms, really bringing back the Spencer mansion memories from RE1/REmake. While the characters and enemy design, on the other hand, look bland and dated. It's by no way a graphically heavy hitter, but the art style depicts exactly what a more modern take on pre-rendered Resident Evil would look like.
Gameplay is either controlled with tank controls on the d-pad or fully 3D movement with the analogue right stick. It’s a neat way to cater for both without having to change the controller layout. Movement is fine, if a little sluggish in animation, but the shooting mechanics are lacklustre. With a slow and unsatisfying gun sound coupled with basic enemy reaction to bullets. Then again, the old RE and SH weren't exactly packing a punch in their gun feedback either.
You get used to the simplicity of the gunplay, it’s more about the focus on getting past enemies in tight hallways with limited ammo to challenge you. The enemies are ruthless in the damage they dish out, but they're few in number, further building their tension when they appear. Just remember to conserve ammo, they're tough to take down and, if you don't thoroughly search each room, the ammo can be extremely limited.
For those unaware of this type of layout in a game, it’s about slowing unlocking more access to a building through finding keys and solving puzzles or obtaining objects to help unlock previously locked off areas. A sort of Metroidvania in its layout, anyone familiar with Resident Evil 1 to 3 will instantly feel at home with this structure.
There’s an obvious, and neatly so, nod to Silent Hill too, outside the obvious and clever use of a torch. Within the game there are portals that take you to an alternative dimension of the hospital. A darker, worn down and rusty dimension. Bringing back the swaps between reality and the other world in the SH series. I’m glad these portals never go overboard though, with the entire hospital available, just small segments. They never overstay their welcome and it’s cool to see the unsettling, darker versions of familiar rooms.
The balancing act of being heavily inspired and playing on the strings of nostalgia is a tricky one. Tormented Souls heavily leans towards nostalgia and without the experience of the old RE and SH games, I’m guessing newcomers may be put off by its basic gameplay mechanics and key-unlocking layout. However, it’s a neat way to try the experience of RE and SH in modern times, and if it sparks your interest the transition over to the old classics shouldn’t be so steep of a learning curve!
Would I recommend it over the HD version of REmake for newcomers to the genre though? No, the latter has more difficulty options and doesn’t rely so much on the player knowing the genre prior to playing. Puzzles are simpler in REmake too.
So, it’s definitely a title for old-school horror fans. While at the same time I must stress that it holds a candle of its own too. I never felt it became too much of a RE and SH tribute. The stories and atmosphere in all these games are different from each other. I did enjoy all the nods to the old titles, but for someone unaware they don’t feel they're missing any references.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my playthrough. The story is simply presented but captivating enough to keep me excited. The real star of the show here though, is the setting and look of the game. Eagerly you want to explore more of the hospital, it's one of the few games that successfully recaptures the atmosphere of the Spencer mansion from the first Resident Evil.
A solid survival horror with a great throwback to a bygone era in visuals, game mechanics, layout and presentation.
